My “day job” is in the cellular phone industry. One of the service related issues I see the most often are customers who bought a phone at another store but come to me because they’re not happy with it. Maybe they weren’t ready for the latest technology, or maybe they purchased a particular phone because they thought it looked cool but found out it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be (this scenario happens a lot with the iPhone), or maybe they simply don’t like the phone’s features. Of course, we call this phenomenon “buyer’s remorse.”

We see it all the time, whether it involves a car, a television, a piece of furniture, or a computer. Plenty of people walk away from a purchase in which they’ve invested loads of money and time spent researching, only to find they’re not really satisfied with what they’ve brought home. Too often, buyer’s remorse happens when it’s too late and the product cannot be returned. Just this week we’ve come across a clear case of buyer’s remorse in the person of Cornel West.

The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

So for Cornel West, the “moral philosopher” (wait, make that Marxist), the bloom is off the rose of the Obama presidency because he hasn’t lived up to the “populist rhetoric” (wait, make that stealth socialism) of his campaign.

Clearly, Dr. West has failed to see the radical forest for the stealth socialist trees. Barack Obama, the far-Left radical, schooled in the tactics of the Midwest Academy and ACORN, subscribes to a strategy of stealth socialism. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of this philosophy in Stanley Kurtz’s Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama And The Untold Story Of American Socialism. Obama and other stealth socialists seek not to bring about a revolution in which all the things that folks like West call “justice” are implemented in one fell swoop. Rather, stealth socialists work through the existing machine of politics to nudge America further to the Left a little at a time, until, like the frog in the boiling pot, we suddenly discover we’re living in a European-style socialist nation.